Power in this work

Dad/Mike went out with some of our missionaries and wrote about his experience
to our children....

July 14, 2009
Well, I went out with Elders Espinel and Marquez today and it was great. We had some excellent visits. We had an excellent lesson with Mariana and her three children and her niece. What a sweet spirit she has to learn and follow the Lord. When we arrived there she was studying the Book of Mormon with her children. They had a study journal out and were making notes of what they were studying. It was great! We then had a lesson with her to review her commitment to quit smoking as well as attending Church this Sunday and recommit her for the family to be baptized. What a truly sweet spirit she has in being humble and teachable. She had been smoking two packs of cigarettes a day for 19 years. She is down to seven cigarrettes today and wrote down her goal to decrease it to three for tomorrow. A scripture came to my mind that I was preparing to share with her. She began talking about how that she knows that it is the influence of Satan that causes her to smoke. When she said that I shared the following scripture with her:



2 Nephi 9:39 O, my beloved brethren, remember the awfulness in transgressing against that Holy God, and also the awfulness of yielding to the enticings of that cunning one. Remember, to be carnally-minded is death, and to be spiritually-minded is life eternal.



I learned of this scripture last night as I was studying from a book called “He Did Deliver Me from Bondage” by Colleen C. Harrison. It is an outstanding book that focuses on helping people overcome addiction but in reality, it has a message for all of us on how to truly submit our lives to the Savior. It is based on the twelve step program from AA but she has presented in a Church context with wonderful Book of Mormon references. The first step she identifies is “O How Great is the Nothingness of the Children of Men” (Mosiah 4:5, Alma 26:12). She presents a series of daily scriptures to study in preparation for an in-depth analysis of this principle. The Day 1 scripture is 2 Nephi 9:39 which I studied today in my personal study.



As I read this scripture to her I could see tears start to well up in her eyes. The spirit was really strong and I know she understood the scripture and how the adversary works to try and destroy her. I know she truly wants to follow the Savior and I know she will overcome smoking. I know that the fact that I am studying this book and I just happen to study this scripture this morning was not by accident. The Lord loves each one of us and desires to bless our lives.